New York City

New York by Crab TurnerNew York has been obsessed with the hipster since its modern incarnation peaked about a decade ago (in hipster time, that's the year LCD Soundsystem released “Losing My Edge”). We've had intellectual forums to figure out who's a hipster, where he came from and where he disappeared to. We've had fake bear traps baited with American Spirit smokes and Pabst Blue Ribbon planted on the sidewalks. Yeti-like, the hipster appears briefly in Freeman Alley before disappearing into the crowd for a meal of rich foods and craft cocktails.Somewhere along the line, the subculture became the mass culture here, and everybody was pointing fingers at the other guy's mustache. The rumpled Columbia professor had a 23-year-old in Williamsburg aping his style, right down to the Kierkegaard first editions on his bookshelf. Everyone's jeans got a little bit slimmer.The city that created the hipster is thoroughly and indelibly marked by it. Some locals might find this a little grating, but for travelers, sniffing out the hipster route means the reward of a good time on the cheap.